A World Out of Time

"Don't do it!" Corbell barked. He remembered uneasily that he had never been sure of Peerssa's motives. "Listen, life on Earth has been adjusting to this situation for a million years or more. If you screw it up now most of the biosphere will die, including what passes for humanity these days."

The old woman already looked younger, if only in a tightening of the muscles in her face, a smoothing of the pouchy look. Corbell looked away from the malicious cat-smile. He lifted the helmet and said in Boyish, "We were right. No coincidence at all. Peerssa dropped me here, then went to look Uranus over. He's going to put everything back the way it was when he left Earth."

Gording stared. "But the ice! The ice would cover-"

"Bear with me a little longer, will you?" He lowered the helmet on Gording's answer.

Peerssa's delayed reply came. "I do not take your orders, Corbel. I take orders from Mirelly-Lyra Zeelashisthar, who was once a citizen of the State."

He should have known better, but it took him by surprise. He screamed, "You traitor!"

Mirelly-Lyra threw back her head and laughed.

Corbell laid the helmet on the desk. It took him a moment to find his voice. "No wonder you were smirking. What happened?"

She was thoroughly enjoying herself. "I tried to call your autopilot. No luck. A few days ago I tried again. It may have helped that my translator uses your voice. Peerssa and I talked for many hours about the State, and the world, and you-"

She broke off because Peerssa's reply had arrived. "My loyalty has never wavered, Corbell. Was there ever a time when you could say the same?"

"Drop dead," Corbell told the helmet. "Stand by. Mirelly-Lyra is with us now. We'll try to talk her into changing your orders." To Gording he said, "She rules my autopilot. She rules Uranus. I'm tired."

"You must persuade her not to let it carry out its mission. This is urgent, Corbel."

"I thought of that." Corbell closed his eyes and leaned back.

He could watch it happen. As long as he could survive at all, he would be young. He could watch glaciers cover Antarctica until the ice was a mile thick. He and Mirelly-Lyra could watch the dwarf buffalo and the nude polar bears and the Boys and the dikta flee north until they froze in snowstorms or starved in land baked bare of life or died for lack of the vitamin D in kathope seed.

Maybe that was an angle. Did the old retread want the Earth all for herself? Or would she prefer company? But she'd fled the Boys once, and lived alone... hmmm. Where did she get her food? Was there anything she couldn't stand to see extinct?

He opened his eyes. Gording was looking concerned for him. Oddly, so was the old woman.

"Nothing hurts," Gording said. "I was used to things hurting. Sometimes my breath would come short. Always my joints and tendons and muscles ached. Corbell, you've found it. We're young again."

"Yeah. Good."

"Play on her gratitude. I can't talk to her. It has to be you. You're capable. The fate of the world is on your shoulders."

"That's all I need." He closed his eyes for a moment... just for a moment... and then he asked Mirelly-Lyra, "How do you feel?"

"I feel good. I feel strong. Maybe I only want to believe your lie."

"Okay. Pay attention." Corbell set the helmet between them. He talked half for Peerssa's benefit. "The world is baked and dead everywhere except in Antarctica. What's left alive is all tropical stuff evolved for six years of daylight and six years of night. If Antarctica gets covered by ice again everything will die. The ruling population is-" He used the Boyish word. "Boys, eleven-year-olds who live forever. There's a minor population of adults for breeding. The men look like Gording, or younger. They're human. There are some minor changes-" He began to describe them: the pale skin, the receding hairline...

Mirelly-Lyra regarded Gording without favor. But she must see him as human. The biggest difference, the receding hairline, looked natural on an old man.

He hadn't impressed her yet. He went on: "If we ever expect to get a State established again, it'll be with the adults, the dikta. The Boys are too different. What I'm getting at is, there is a chance. Right now there are about ten women to every man, but in a hundred years it'll be nearly one-to-one." An angle there? He definitely had her attention. "Of course, your role wouldn't be very important at first, with that big an imbalance. But you'd be the only woman with a full head of hair. And the only redhead."

"Just a minute, Corbell. Isn't it true that Boys rule the adults? I don't want to be a slave. And what about the Girls?"

"The Girls are long dead."

"Ahhh." Mirelly-Lyra must have hated the Girls.

"Right. It's Boys and dikta now. We can get the dikta to move here, because we've got the dikta immortality. They'll come. I know where to find a ship."

She was shaking her head, frowning. Now Corbell knew that she'd bought half of what he was selling. Against half-bald women her great beauty would rule the men who ruled the dikta! But: "How long have the Boys ruled?"

"Ever since you brought the dikta to Antarctica as escaped convicts, whenever the hell that was. Say a million years."

Oncoming youth put music in her laugh. "And now the dikta will break free, that suddenly? The sheep will become wolves because we offer them a sufficient bribe?"

Dammit, she did have a point. He changed languages. "Gording? Will the dikta revolt?"

"Yes."

"They never did before."

"The dangers were too great. The rewards were too small."

Maybe. Corbell switched to English. "He says they will. I believe him. Now just a minute, let me tell you why. First, they have not been bred for docility. They've been bred to produce a better strain of Boys, and they've got the genes. Second-how do I put this? You know what a cringing man looks like?"

She gri

"Okay. They cringe. But it's a gesture, a formality. The next second they're walking as tall as ever. The Boys cringe to each other, too. I think the dikta haven't revolted for a million years because the odds weren't right. Now they are."

She sat silent, frowning.

"What did you think you'd get out of Peerssa moving the Earth?"

"I thought... We're the last of the State, Corbell. I thought we could start the human race over."

"Adam and Eve, with Eve in charge. Mirelly-Lyra, we'd better hope we can mate with the dikta, because, frankly, I'm terrified of you. I don't think I could get it up."

"Low sex urge?"

"Yeah. Would you like to rule the dikta instead? You'll have one thing going for you. You rule the sky. Once again a Girl rules the sky."

He saw the begi

She leered teasingly. "I should make you wait."

"Peerssa has already started the-"

"Give me the helmet."

"Goddamn braking sequence. Here. Wait a minute." He didn't let go of the helmet.

"Corbell? Isn't this what you wanted?"

"I just had the damndest thought." Don't blow this. The fate of the world- shaddup! "Give me a minute to think it through." When a man commands a dji

"I want Cape Horn and the region around it to be about fifteen centigrade degrees cooler."

II

From the roof of the office building they watched Uranus pass.